What Is Temporary Staffing? Comparing Hiring vs. Outsourcing

Temporary staffing is a hiring model in which businesses hire workers on a non-permanent, flexible agreement to cover short-term goals, projects, or seasonal needs. There are different ways in which businesses hire temporary employees: 

• Direct contact: The business reaches out and hires the temporary worker directly. 
• Staffing agency: When a company hires a staffing agency to take over the hiring process. 
• Outsourcing: The company hires a third-party vendor to meet its needs, and the vendor takes over the hiring process. 

The scale of temporary needs explains itself in this study: US staffing companies employed an average of 2 million temporary and contract workers per week in Q4 2025. Either way, hiring temporary workers is a strategic move when businesses don’t have the budget for full-time contracts. It also allows them to test employees before transitioning to a dedicated role, increasing their talent pool.

The most common traits in temporary staffing include: 

• A limited time frame: The work is tied to a project, volume surges (CX businesses), seasonal needs, or covering short-notice leaves. 
• Flexible headcount: Allows companies to increase or decrease headcount any time when needed.
• Role-specific training: Temporary hiring requires fast and efficient onboarding, so you need to adapt your training schedule.
• Clear scope of work: The business should define duties, schedule, reporting structure, and success measures.
• Possible third-party support: Staffing agencies or outsourcing providers may recruit, schedule, manage, or employ the workers, but the company needs to have the final word.

Now, let’s move on to explain the benefits, challenges, differences, and how to choose the right fit for your temporary needs.

Temporary staffing brings several benefits to your organization, but at the same time there are some challenges you might face while using this hiring model. Let’s go ahead and explain the most common benefits first.

Advantages of seasonal staffing

• Adjusting staffing to short-term demand: Forecasting demand is a great way to prepare for seasonal surges, but sometimes demand increases along the way, overwhelming your team. Research shows that 43% of retailers planned seasonal hiring to handle returns. When demand increases and your team can’t handle it all at once, seasonal staffing is a great way to overcome any roadblock without burning out your employees. 
• Protects your staffing budget: Not every business task needs to be covered by a full-time employee; some tasks require seasonal workers. Hiring temporary employees prevents your budget from draining with permanent contract benefits, salaries, and hiring expenses. 
• Accessing global talent: Whether you hire directly or ask for an agency’s help, you start building your own talent pool, a great way to build a professional network. Next time you open a full-time role, you can first go through your seasonal employees’ contacts and hire them without hesitation. 

Possible drawbacks of seasonal staffing 

• Fast onboarding: Training and onboarding are non-negotiables even if you hire a temporary employee. The main challenge comes from summarizing weeks of training and onboarding into a few days. Ensuring you include every resource and go through the necessary steps is hard, and a quick session might not cover the entire process.
• Pressure on internal management: Additional agents need schedules, coaching, and answers to policy questions. Without clear processes, managers may spend peak hours resolving internal confusion while customer queues grow.
• Lack of continuity and consistency: Constant staff changes and limited preparation produce inconsistent answers. PwC’s study shows that 29% of consumers reported abandoning a brand because of poor customer experience, online or in person. The only way to ensure consistency is through clear, documented workflows; the challenge comes from finding the right time to build an efficient process.

Outsourcing is the practice of contracting an external provider to carry out specific business tasks or functions. Some common outsourcing services include:

1. Customer support outsourcing: The outsourcing provider supports a business’s customers through channels like phone, email, live chat, SMS, etc. 
2. Back office support: When a company hires an outsourced provider that supports them with non-customer-facing tasks like data entry, document transcription, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. 
3. Quality assurance: A service that evaluates and ensures a company’s workflows, processes, products, and/or support maintain the same quality standards over time. 
4. Technical support: A more complex type of customer support, where agents assist with customer queries about software or apps.

The main difference between temporary staffing and outsourcing lies in control and deliverables. Temporary staffing adds employees to processes a business controls, but outsourcing means delegating an entire process or service to another vendor. 

Choosing the right model depends on the business needs. Adding more employees is not always the solution; sometimes you need to outsource a service entirely. Quick note: Delegating is not the same as leaving responsibilities aside; even if you outsource a business function, you still need to play an active role in planning, training, measuring success, improving performance, etc. 

Temporary worker vs. seasonal employee: What’s the difference?

What is a temporary worker? Someone hired for a limited task. And what is a seasonal worker? Someone hired for a recurring busy period, such as holiday shopping. The main difference is timing. 

A seasonal worker is considered a temporary worker, but temporary workers on a general basis are hired when a business needs assistance for a project or a limited task. Seasonal workers are hired on previously identified peak seasons where businesses need help to take over on demand. 

For example, an Ecommerce seasonal employee joins before BFCM and stays through delivery and the post-purchase period. Then, an Ecommerce temporary worker is hired to take over a website rebranding before peak season. They are both temporary employees, but the timing and reason are different. 

In short:

• Temporary worker: Broad category for limited-duration work.
• Seasonal employee: Temporary worker hired for a recurring seasonal demand period.

what is temporary staffing vs outsourcing

*A hybrid model is also possible: Keep complex or sensitive work in-house while outsourcing selected queues, channels, hours, or overflow volume.

When weighing in-house vs. outsourced Ecommerce support for BFCM, assess these five factors before comparing proposals or opening seasonal positions:

By late September, your business should have an idea of the expected volume you’ll receive during BFCM. Your hiring efforts should be defined and starting by now, but you’re still on time to decide which model works best for you. Before deciding between in-house and outsourced employees, you must first evaluate the following:

1. Internal management capacity: In-house temporary staff needs training and onboarding, and your internal management team must make time to do it. When outsourcing, your role is reduced but still active, requiring less time from managers, allowing them to focus on core tasks. 
2. Workload complexity: Make sure the level of complexity required to complete tasks, so you prepare enough resources for agents to exceed expectations. Define clear roles and tasks for every agent to understand their responsibilities. 
3. Coverage needs: Identify the following support needs: the languages required, the amount of active support hours, how many support channels you need, how many agents you need, etc. 
4. Preparation time: Always leave enough time for planning; this gives you a clear advantage. To prepare efficiently, you must evaluate last year’s data, forecast volume, understand your current context, and your customer needs. 
5. Total seasonal cost: Enlist all hiring expenses you cover and compare them with outsourcing costs. Saving money should not be your main deciding factor, but we must not hide its importance. The key is to focus on the strategy that covers every need. 

After assessing your needs, the final factor comes down to how much additional support your team needs and which responsibilities it can manage internally. Let’s briefly explain how each model helps you, including the hybrid one:

• Temporary hiring is a better fit when your brand has clear, established processes and the internal management team has the bandwidth to train new temporary workers. 
• Managed outsourcing is a better fit when your brand needs to offer new services or improve the quality of existing ones, but doesn’t have the necessary resources to do so. PD: You still need to collaborate closely with the outsourced partner. 
• A hybrid model is a better fit when internal teams have limited time to focus on new tasks, but have previously defined workflows that allow for smooth onboarding. Quick tip: the best way to succeed is to establish a great communication strategy.

Brands start feeling staffing pressure before, during, and after peak sales periods, and hiring permanent staff for every demand surge is unsustainable, so recurring to a seasonal employee is the smartest choice. 

Also, outsourcing can help satisfy seasonal needs and cover predictable volume increases, offering scaling up or down when needed, extended-hour coverage, multilingual support, and more. 

Expand coverage to match peak demand

Outsourcing partners provide extra capacity when teams can’t take over the entire responsibility. One of the highest demand seasons is BFCM, and businesses must prepare themselves with extra hours, channels, and agents when needed. Gorgias found that daily pre-purchase ticket volume was approximately 51% higher during its 2025 BFCM window, and outsourcing supports you with it. 

Maintain consistent service as the team grows 

Consistency is key for every support interaction and CX strategy. Your customers deserve the same level of service during every season, and keeping your brand’s guidelines on your own is complicated. 

Reduce day-to-day pressure on internal managers 

Provider team leads can handle scheduling, agent questions, coaching, and routine escalations. This gives internal leaders more room to address business decisions and coordinate with marketing, fulfillment, or other departments.

Maintain support through delivery and returns

The partnership can continue supporting customers as inquiries shift from promotions and purchases to delivery problems, exchanges, and refunds.

The benefit is continuity through the full holiday customer journey. Coverage can then be reduced in line with remaining demand and the agreed terms, with open cases handed over clearly.

Navigating peak shopping season

For example, a D2C personal-care brand turned to Horatio for additional capacity and operational support during BFCM. Despite a 105% increase in inquiries, the brand maintained a 10-minute first response time and improved resolution time by 12.46%.

Read the full case study here. 

Navigating peak shopping surges like BFCM doesn't have to mean choosing between overworked internal management and compromised customer experiences. While temporary hiring can temporarily plug headcount gaps, the reality of shortened onboarding schedules, daily oversight demands, and sudden ticket spikes often places an unsustainable strain on your core operations.

To maintain high support standards when volume explodes, ecommerce brands need more than just extra hands; they need managed, scalable capacity.

Ready to scale your customer support effortlessly this peak season? Partner with Horatio to build a high-performing, flexible CX strategy that drives customer loyalty and keeps your operations running smoothly. Contact us and let's start collaborating on your BFCM strategy!

What is temporary staffing?

Temporary staffing means hiring workers for a limited period to cover short-term needs, such as seasonal demand, employee absences, or projects. Businesses can recruit directly or through a staffing agency.

What are seasonal employees?

Seasonal employees are hired for recurring busy periods, such as holiday shopping. In ecommerce, they may support customers before BFCM and continue through delivery and returns.

How does temporary staffing differ from outsourcing?

Temporary staff typically work under your managers’ supervision. With managed outsourcing, a provider also handles agreed responsibilities such as scheduling, training, coaching, and quality monitoring.

Can an ecommerce brand outsource support only for BFCM?

Some providers offer seasonal arrangements. Confirm the preparation period, minimum commitment, available capacity, and coverage for delivery inquiries and returns after the promotion ends.

Can temporary employees and outsourced agents work together?

Yes. A brand can combine both models, assigning work by channel, shift, or expertise. Shared policies and clear escalation routes help maintain consistent service.